Ok, so the car is not a GTO but it made for a nice title.
April 22, 2009 - Driver Erica Thiering, Alberta Champion (for her age class,
she's 17) stock car racer, poses for a photo at her family's home.

I had to do a portrait of a local teen race car driver out on the family farm. It would of been nice to shoot on a race track, but like in many cases I'm left to the mercy of the assignment editor (in rare cases you have an assignment editor that is a photo editor) and the time schedule of the subject. I knew I wanted to create a dramatic image but also thought about other racing photos I've seen of winning drivers – driver on hood of car.

The Technical Stuff: A storm was coming in so I had to be quick. On the positive side, the storm brought with it some great dramatic looking clouds. I used two SB900 speedlights. One was shot through a white umbrella (to provide a softer light) and pointed at Erica. The other was used as fill for the car. The speedlight in the umbrella was gelled with a CTO (colour temperature orange) and then I set the white balance on my Nikon D700 to tungsten light. The white balance setting made the ambient light (which I stopped down to darken) very blue while the CTO gelled light brought back the warmth to her face.